Picture yourself in a directive situation. It could be a classroom setting, or in a lecture, or possibly even listening to a video. What do you imagine you are doing? How is the information affecting you? More importantly, how are you taking it in or experiencing it? What dynamics come up? How aware are you of what is going on with your senses, and how much do you intuitively take in? Most self-report tests measure you in one or the other – sensing or intuition. At Human Art we look at both.
“It’s hard to separate sensing and feeling. For example, we all think in the here and now, but we can’t help but consider the possibilities of the future.”
-Rod Thornley, Clinical Director of Human Art
Children are a great example of this dynamic. You can watch them experience life and see this sensing and intuition happening. We have a pond near our home. It is in the center of a park and it is large. It has a bridge and many paths around it. The children in the neighborhood love to go there in the summer and catch frogs. They study them and then throw them back. Every once in a while, a child will do as the others do and take their bucket to the park and join in with the others catching frogs and observing them; then it occurs to them that they want to take it home. Let’s break down what happens just prior to them getting home, mom seeing the frog, and the well-known, and expected, march back to the pond to return the frog to his home.
The child might experience the frog by taking him out of the bucket. The sensing part will kick in first. The child will take the frog in his hands and feel the slime that coats the frog, he might sense the smell of the pond in the area around the frog. He moves on to how any mud left on the frog’s skin slithers around on his hands and makes it difficult to hold on to the frog.
It is at this point he moves to the intuitive part of his experience. It might occur to him right then that his mom might not be happy with the new member of the family that the child brings home. He might be wondering how the frog is going to like his home. He is now thinking intuitively by processing what could happen in the future.
We all have and experience both sensing and intuition. Depending on how we are made up, our design or our personality is how each of us would respond to the frog situation as a child. Some might think intuitively first, before the sensing experience. Others might alternate between the two very quickly and often. The important thing to remember is that we have both and we all have different degrees. So as unique as each human is, is how unique we will experience life and move in and out of sensing vs intuition. The point is to learn how you do it and then support yourself in it.
Your call to action today is to really evaluate how you do it. You would ask yourself in any given situation, “what would I do?” “How long do I stay in each?” Use your relationship with yourself. Have “self-talk” and learn to collect information from yourself in an honest way; not to please or impress others, but to really get to know yourself. Then take a step toward supporting yourself. Use this information as you better collaborate with others. It could be as simple as explaining the frog dynamic. You might find yourself standing up for yourself and really learning to love yourself.
You are unique, you are one of a kind. So is your neighbor, and whoever you interact with in a given day. Celebrate you, celebrate others, and remember everyone is a masterpiece.
Brook
RELATED POSTS:
Human Art and Myers-Briggs — How Do We Compare to Other Personality Tests?
Human Art vs Other Personality Tests: Thinking vs. Feeling
Human Art vs Other Personality Tests: The Point of all This is You